


Voice Box

by Hermit9



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Prompt Fill, Rock as a weapon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 09:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10694448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/pseuds/Hermit9
Summary: For the /r/fanfiction daily prompt : April 9th – Scenic Sunday – Uh Oh – Your character wakes to a silent world.Or : What would happen if the Winchesters encountered the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Hush".





	Voice Box

Dean prided himself on many skills. Marksmanship, mechanical engineering with limited means. Stealth. On nights like these, definitely stealth. He tip-toed around the room, gathering clothes and getting dressed, slipping out the door and waiting a beat to listen if she would call after him. There was nothing, not even a whimper. He let the door close quietly behind him. Nothing like a clean exit.

The walk back to the motel felt longer than it really was. The night was cold and wet in the early spring. The town itself was too quiet. There were no crying babies, no yelling from the bars, not even barking dogs as he cut across the alleys and parking lots. Weird little town. Dean was glad the job was over and they would leave it behind.

He opened the motel door as silently as he had closed… Candice? Carrie? C… something’s door. Sam was sitting up on his bed, laptop whirring on his side. He smiled and nodded, then pointed to the bathroom with a jerk of his head. Yeah, okay, Dean agreed he probably reeked of sex and it wasn’t kind to rub it in Sam’s face.

The shower was a brief thing— the motel’s hot water wasn’t quite back to proper temperature and Dean wasn’t so keen on freezing cold on naked skin. He couldn’t wait to get home to a proper shower with decent pressure. When he stepped out of the bathroom, ruffling his hair with the threadbare towel, he noticed Sam was sitting at the table and had a brown paper bag in front of him. Dean could smell it before he opened it, sausage breakfast sandwich with extra bacon. Back to back cases in Sam’s apology language. Awesome.

“Thanks, man,” Dean said. Or tried to say. He felt his throat vibrate and his lips shape the words over and around the soggy English muffin, but no words actually came out. He tried again, pressing a hand over his throat to confirm the theory and got the same result. Not even the raspiness of a good voice extinction, just no sound at all. Sam smirked. He nodded towards the bag. Message received: eat first.

***

The police station was strange, even for the early hours of the day. The usual symphony of ringing phones was absent, for one. So was the shouting. No scream for “innocents” protesting police brutality. No wailing babes waiting for CPS. That didn’t mean that the precinct was deserted. There were people in every hallway, every nook and office, with notepads and cell phones and whiteboards. Sam and Dean flashed their faux badges at the front desk and got waved right through, as the agent squinted at the screen in his hand and pantomimed to the rest of the crowd to wait their turn.

The ME’s domain was calmer. The doc seemed nonplussed by his sudden muteness, but then again the dead rarely spoke. He pulled the corpse out and dropped clipboards on top of it. Sam raised an eyebrow and the doctor shrugged, making a show of picking up his coffee mug. The doors closed behind him in a hydraulic hush.

Dean turned his attention back to Sam, registering the slight shoulder jiggle as a chuckle. Sam handed him the two autopsy reports. One had the cause of death as a generic “blunt force trauma.” The other had actual details. Dean gave the clipboard back, lifting the sheet to see what they were dealing with. She was pretty, with dark olive skin and black hair in a pixie cut. Young too. Why did the monsters always go for the young ones?

He lifted the sheet further, noting how her chest had been carved open, her heart missing. It was too neat for a werewolf, pure-bred or otherwise. The breastbone had been cut from the ribs, not sawed or broken. Whatever this was, it was strong, fast and intelligent. He raised his eyes to meet Sam’s and nodded. Sam frowned and leaned over to verify a few things then nodded as well. They replaced the fabric cover and rolled her back inside the drawer, leaving the sanitized autopsy on her stomach. They kept the other one. Better to be gone before the doc came back.

***

Years on the road gave you experience most civilians lacked. Knowing to go to the hole-in-the-wall Chinese place for dinner, for one. The waitress was well used to orders by a show of fingers. Getting the hell inside was an other. They ate their food sitting crossed legged on the rock hard mattresses, Dean slurping his Chow Mein noodles and Sam sniper-precise when hunting the steamed vegetables in his almond chicken. Even with Chinese take-out, he’d found the closest thing to a salad. Freak.

On the crappy motel TV, the city’s mayor and some representative from the CDC were talking about a massive viral laryngitis outbreak. It was a load of shit and even they knew it. The cameras were carefully avoiding the crowded streets and the looted stores, as if the town’s grown adults had lost all moral sense when others had been rendered unable to tell them to just stop. Dean’s knuckles were split from breaking up a few altercations near the motel. He hoped the kid had made it home okay.

Sam’s laptop dinged with Castiel’s update, the benign sound almost deafening in the strange soundscape. Dean knew it wasn’t louder than usual, but the room lacked the usual din of hasty lovemaking and drunken disputes. There were the echoing, conflicting, electronic voices of the newscasts, but it wasn’t the same. The email had clippings of books, cellphone snapshots, mostly well framed. Cas had translated the older or more arcane ones. He was getting better at doing that, something Dean wanted to think of as a good sign. Maybe Cas would stick around if he had a sense of purpose.

Cross-referencing with their physical clues was easy enough and Sam spun the screen around, showing Dean an ink drawing of some ghoulish creature, smiling wide with lipless mouths. Dean answered with an exaggerated shudder, then ran a finger under his throat and raised an eyebrow. Sam’s brow furrowed and he sighed, opening his mouth wide and gesturing projecting with his hand along his throat. Of course, human voices would kill them, in a town where everyone was suddenly mute. He frowned and pointed at the TV, still droning on on the newscast. He grabbed the remote and flicked through the channel until he found an old horror movie with a screaming starlet. Sam shook his head. “Live,” he wrote on the cheap complimentary notepad before tossing it to Dean. Dean grinned and made grabby hands for the laptop. He had an idea that might just work.

***

It took a bit of research and creative googling, because, let’s face it, nothing happens in Lebanon, Kansas. But Dean managed to get everything set up and used the good credit card to buy the ticket so there wouldn’t be an issue at the door. Explaining to Cas had been easy enough, though he’d punted the technical tutorials to Sam.

Finding the tape/modern electronic monstrosity had been harder. Dean could have sworn he’d thrown it under the back seat, but it obviously wasn’t there anymore. He must have moved it when on a cleaning streak or in the great nachzehrer mess. Sam had laughed and plucked the thing from the trunk, hidden in a velvety pouch next to the white sage, because of course it was. And Sam looked so fucking smug about it, like he’d planned it.

It was an easy plan once everything was set up. Castiel went to the loudest, screamiest rock concert Dean could find within driving distance of the bunker. The cover bands weren’t very good and Cas looked incredibly out of place (if the comments of the guy behind him could be trusted) but he held his phone high and streaming the show via Facetime to Sam’s phone. It was plugged into the very powerful sound system Dean had installed in Baby a while back, which he'd never really got to use to its full potential. And how it purred and growled and keened now, through open windows and accompanied by Dean’s drumming on the steering wheel.

Going up and down the streets in their new scream mobile, chasing impeccably dressed ghouls was fun. It really was. Dean decided they should do it more often. Sonic weaponry was a field of research they should get into. He was a bit sad when the ghouls started congregating to a desecrated church, and they had to get out of the car and get the actual killing done. Or light shoving, as a particularly high note seemed to make them brittle. They scouted the church efficiently, finding a not-suspicious-at-all wooden box on the ruined altar. Dean poked it with his machete and a thin grey mist escaped, finding its way down their throat and then exploding outward toward the rest of the town.

“So. Karaoke night?” asked Dean.

“Dude, no.”

“Dude, yes.”


End file.
